A suspected al Qaeda leader died Friday night just days before his trial in New York on charges that he orchestrated the 1998 embassy bombings in Tanzania Kenya that killed 224 people.
Among the 224 slain during the bombings were 12 Americans, including two CIA agents.
Nazih Abdul-Hamed al Ruqai was diagnosed with advanced liver cancer after U.S. commandos and FBI agents captured him in a 2013 raid outside his house near Tripoli, Libya.
His attorney, Bernard Kleinman, said his client’s health had gone downhill over the last month and the 50-year-old died at a hospital in New York, The Washington Post reported Saturday.
Court documents filed Saturday state that Ruqai died of “long-standing medical problems,” The Virginia Gazette reported.
A 150-page indictment alleged that he began planning the embassy attacks with al-Qaeda as early as 1993.
Ruqai was charged with conspiracy to kill U.S. citizens and destroy U.S. property and pleaded not guilty to the charges.
He had close ties to al Qaeda beginning in 1992 and was sent to Kenya to conduct surveillance on possible targets for an al Qaeda operation, according to the indictment.
Mr. Kleinman told The Post that his client was innocent and had severed his ties with al Qaeda long before the embassy bombings.
His wife, who asked to be identified as Um Abdullah, told The Associated Press that his illnesses, including hepatitis C, worsened while he was in prison.
“I accuse the American government of kidnapping, mistreating, and killing an innocent man. He did nothing,” she said, AP reported.
Of the suspected terrorists named in the indictment for the embassy attacks, nine have died or been killed in Pakistan, Afghanistan or Somalia, including al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Six are currently serving life sentences in U.S. prisons, but several still remain at large, according to the Virginia Gazette.
• Kellan Howell can be reached at khowell@washingtontimes.com.
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